Research and student voice

Tett, Lyn
(2009)
Research and student voice.
In: SCUTREA (Standing conference on university teaching and research in the education of adults) 39th annual conference, 7th-9th July 2009, University of Cambridge.

Abstract

This paper is written partly as a response to a critique from Sally Baker and hercolleagues (2006) about an article that John Bamber and I published (Bamberand Tett, 2001) in 2001. Their critique was based on the grounds that we haddeveloped our arguments in a way that depended ‘on an assumption about theveracity of student participants [that] represents a solipsistic retreat into a state ofanalysis where things are the case because people say they are’ (p 175).Criticism is never comfortable but it did provoke me into thinking about the natureof evidence that is derived from interviews and focus groups with students. Doesthis imply, as Baker and colleagues argue, that this methodology inevitablymeans that researchers have ‘not taken a systematically sociologically informedanalysis of the nature of institutions or society or the material obstacles tochange but have instead relied on the subjective individualised realm of studentexperiences’ (p 175)? I will argue that this is an over-simplistic interpretation ofdata that are based on students’ voices and I will draw on findings from a varietyof educational provision ranging from universities to informal literacy provision incommunity settings to examine the role of the researcher in listening to andreinterpreting the detail of people’s lives. There are of course many issuesraised by data derived from using student voices as a method of enquiry so I willbegin with the problems raised for research that is based on listening to, andinterpreting from, interviews with students.